Stoffel Vandoorne took his fourth pole position of the GP2 Series season as he dominated qualifying at his home circuit of Spa-Francorchamps on Friday.
The current GP2 Series championship leader set a time of 1m56.278s to beat current Formula Renault 3.5 Series leader Oliver Rowland by 0.147s.
ART Grand Prix’s Vandoorne always looked in control of the session, and used an alternative strategy to the majority of the field to enable himself to get a clear lap in after finding himself compromised during qualifying last time out at the Hungaroring.
MP Motorsport driver Rowland was closest to Vandoorne, with the Briton getting ahead of Rapax’s Sergey Sirotkin by just under a tenth of a second, while Jordan King placed fourth for Racing Engineering.
Hungaroring Sprint race winner Nobuharu Matsushita continued his strong pace, qualifying fifth in the second ART Grand Prix entry, just 0.002s ahead of Russian Time’s Mitch Evans, while Pierre Gasly was the leading DAMS driver in seventh.
Alexander Rossi will start the Feature race in Belgium from eighth for Racing Engineering ahead of DAMS driver Alex Lynn, while Norman Nato completed the top ten for Arden International.
Rio Haryanto of Campos Racing, currently sitting second in the championshop standings behind Vandoorne, appeared to struggle for pace throughout the session before jumping up to eleventh towards the end of the session, just ahead of Trident’s Raffaele Marciello.
Spa-Francorchamps Qualifying Times
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